There's One Thing Better Than Starting A New Song In Pro Tools

For those who don't know I've recently re-entered the home ownership world and I have to say after 4 weeks I'm completely knackered (for none English readers that's slang for tired out). In that space of time I've been to IKEA more times than I can recall, built endless pieces of furniture with names like KNOB and SLUT and done countless DIY tasks.

I got up at 6am today (yes Sunday) to paint the bathroom and now at 10:45am I can say it's nearly done. But nearly done is not good enough, be that when I'm building an IKEA wardrobe or painting a room, all my wife cares about (and rightly so) is that I finish them.

The ease of modern music making can mean that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, or in the case of composing, unfinished songs or instrumental compositions. Some of us have hard drives littered with Pro Tools sessions that contain everything from two bars of a piano riff to a song that is almost mixed. If our hard drives were our houses then they would be filled with incomplete furniture and half painted rooms... perhaps some of your homes are?

Now let's be clear, the life of a creative is filled with lots of scribbled down ideas or audio memos of melodies and riffs, it's an inevitable part of the ideas process. But sometimes we use that as an excuse for not finishing things.

One of the 'benefits' of having a publishing deal, and indeed a publisher who takes finding new songs seriously, is that you have to deliver songs from idea to completion and often to deadlines. You might think this is unnatural but great writers like Carole King did this for many years writing countless hits with Gerry Goffin.

It's so easy to put our countless unfinished ideas down to temperament or 'the way creativity is' but there comes a time when we have to finish some of these ideas. I recall my buddy Gary Lux who said that exact thing to me about mixes - people just need to finish them.

There is one thing better than starting a new song in Pro Tools and that's finishing one we've already started.

I'd love to write more but I have several tasks to do today... and I must finish them!